


when i rise i see you falling

by tinydragon (tiny_dragon)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 06:38:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12150807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_dragon/pseuds/tinydragon
Summary: in which will is sad and neither of them know what to do but they'll try





	when i rise i see you falling

**Author's Note:**

> a couple of people requested a fic wherein will is the insecure or upset one so: here you go, enjoy a really weird sad mess with questionable pacing and structuring

Will’s main problem is – well, actually, that’s a part of it. Will doesn’t know what his problem is.

He knows Nico likes him. He knows it because he knows how Nico is when he doesn’t like someone. And this isn’t that. He knows Nico likes him because he doesn’t shadow travel midway through a conversation just to piss Will off, because he knows that the whole ‘fading out of existence thing’ still gives him the shakes.

He knows that Nico likes him because they sit together at the campfire and Will teases Nico, and his face glows hot and pale scarlet underneath the light of the burning. He knows it because their fingers brush together and Nico’s eyes widen like little moons, and he knows it because Nico fakes inexplicable, uncontrollable zombie epidemics so as to sit with the Apollo table at meal times.

And, you know, there was the whole thing where Will asked Nico out in the most awkward way possible, and the two of them tend to hole up in Nico’s cabin or behind a tree or lie down in the tall grass (Will’s pick, not Nico’s. Nico claims to have had enough experience with Demeter’s overgrowth, whatever that means) and make out until their lips are sore and their eyes are bright.

Yeah, that too.

But there’s this other thing.

There’s this horrible thing inside of him that crawls out at inconvenient moments. When he can’t sleep or when Nico’s stuck in the underworld with his father, and he hasn’t had a chance to talk for a while. When Percy Jackson makes a joke and Nico laughs and like, not a big deal, but also.

Percy Jackson saved the world a couple of times and jumped into Tartarus after his girlfriend, and how do you compete with that?

So it sneaks up in the night, this little black feeling, like bed bugs or stupid monsters. Not big enough to do anything huge, like cut open the skin and scar, but enough to leave a sore spot.

::

Starts sort of like this:

So Nico and Jason will spend hours duelling, just for the fun of it, with swords and their weird ass powers, and campers will literally fill out to watch, placing bets on which Son of the Big Three is gonna win this one.

Piper joins in, putting her bets on Jason – sometimes, like a supportive girlfriend – or Nico if she’s feeling like that’s her lucky call. Hey, she goes where the money is, much to Jason’s indignation.

But then Piper also had a part in the whole saving the world thing. Piper hasn’t sat on the side lines helplessly, unable to save a single soul when your friends are saving everything around you.

These thoughts aren’t fun, and they make Will feel a little queasy, guilty for even letting himself think of them. He shuts his eyes tight for a moment and when he opens them he catches Nico looking at him from where he’s in the midst of dodging Jason’s attacks.

Will plasters on a big smile, cheers him on. Places a bet.

After the duel, Nico ignores everything else and makes headway straight for Will, who may or may not be hastily trying to make an exit. Because he’s got that feeling again.

Nico is sweaty and his hair is tangled, and he’s breathing a little more heavily than usual, shoulders shuddering with the weight of extra breath.

“Grace, you lost me the last of my drachmas!” Leo screams from afar. “How could you do this to me!”

Nico raises an eyebrow and smiles a little.

“Giving into the temptation of gambling, and at such a young age too,” he says. “So sad.”

It’s a Will-type comment, one meant to make him laugh, and it makes him realise that Nico doesn’t really know what to say because he knows something’s up.

A few years ago people were weary of the death kid who glowered from the other end of the room, and now he’s reading feelings from across ocean spaces.

“Yeah,” Will attempts. “I’m getting a little worried – I’m pretty sure Drew Tanaka is going to end up with his cabin at some point, with the way this is getting. Time to tell Chiron?”

“Oh, Mr D already knows,” Nico says. “Totally approves, of course. Says it reminds him of his ventures to Vegas. I don’t even wanna know.”

“Not sure I do either.”

Nico laughs, and then pauses, and then reaches out and grasps Will’s hands squeezing his fingers lightly now that all but the last few dregs of campers are left in the area.

“Is everything okay?” he asks.

Will smiles and says, “you worry too much.”

::

Nico isn’t perfect, and Will knows this better than anyone.

With glory comes a whole bunch of other things. Dark matter and memories that don’t belong in any living person’s skull. Dreams of dying and thinning away on only pomegranate seeds, feeling yourself slide away into shadows.

There’s a haunted look in Nico’s eyes, sometimes, and the same ghost mask is thinly veiled over the faces of the Seven, and Will wouldn’t trade that for anything.

But people died trying to do the things they did, to save the world and fight off the monsters, to stop the bed bugs biting, gnawing at the ankles of the youngest campers there. So when Will bandages up the broken wrist of an Ares camper, or dries the hot wet tears of a little girl in his own cabin, when they thank him in small, tinny voices, Will can’t help but shudder.

Because they shouldn’t be thanking him.

They aren’t thanking the right person.

::

It comes out of nowhere sometimes, a little like things that go bump in the night.

Each and every demigod at this camp has some sort of scars attached to their skin. And some of these are more obvious than others. Will spends so much time patching people up in the infirmary, not only physically, after duelling incidents or general illnesses that come and go, but soothing his patients when they wake with night terrors.

Like clinging to tidbits of light to stop someone from fading out of existence.

Will’s the head medic. The rest of his cabin look up to him like some kind of icon, in awe of his healing powers, his focus on a patient and the way he keeps it together. But that’s a whole other problem. They don’t realise that just like the rest of them, he’s damaged goods.

Nico looks at him the same way.

Says in awe, reaches up with soft bony fingers to drag a light touch across Will’s cheeks. He breathes things like, ‘you’re amazing’ when he’s healed someone, and the colour has gone from his skin. In awe, like he doesn’t understand how Will has these fingers that are perfect for fixing things up.

If Nico called himself damaged goods, then Will would hit the roof and he’d come down with a smart ass answer and a scowl, listing reasons why that’s not true, why Nico kicks ass, why that’s the dumbest thing he could ever ever say. Wait til his eyes are closed in thought, because Nico can’t always pull all the self hatred out of him, no matter what Will says.

Gently kisses the thin skin of his lids.

Says, “you’re fine, Death Boy.”

And yet – when it’s his own face he’s looking at and his own heart he’s stabbing at with rusted arrow ends, none of that comes to mind.

And there’s just this Nothing in front of him – this big white blank space. And so in spite of all the love he feels off the backs of his family and his friends, and the boy that kisses him before he goes to bed, it reads with just a few little words that hurt like bee stings: you’re not worth it.

Not worth it, not worth them, not worth him.

::

It’s not always this bad.

It comes and goes like coughs and headaches. Sometimes he falls asleep and it’s gone by morning. But sometimes it sticks in the back of his brain, thick and black and ugly. Sometimes he can’t stop thinking about it and he can’t sleep at night and he thinks dark thoughts like:

Not worth it. Not worth him.

After all, he lives in a camp full of heroes and if he isn’t one of them, what does that make him?

Nico picks up on his silence, a few days after a particularly bad spell has been leaving him in all these different kinds of blue. They’re at the campfire, and people are singing some dumb songs, taking the piss out of quests and destiny and the joke life of each and every demigod. About dead beat parents.

Merriment and red cheeks, but there’s something really heavy holding down Will’s heart.

“Are you okay?” he whispers. His hand reaches out and takes Will’s, threading their fingers together. Nico’s hands are always cold but it feels kind of good against the heat of the flames.

“Yeah,” Will tells him.

Flashes a bright light smile, but of course, Nico doesn’t buy it.

“I’ve been worried about you. These past few days, something has been off. I can tell.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nico sighs.

“Whatever, Will. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. But you don’t always need to be the Camp Medic, you know? Or the big brother, or the head of the Apollo cabin. It’s okay if you’re not sometimes. That’s – it’s fine.”

Nico’s cheeks are a little aglow, and Will is touched. He knows that Nico doesn’t find these kind of things easy. That words plucked from the bottom of the heart are as easily accessible as flowers blooming in Tartarus.

But he’s trying and Will’s tired because he’s just not really sure if he’s worth those words, or that smile, or the hands soft and warm and holding his own.

::

His little siblings love him because he can patch up wounds in a flash and he’ll make them laugh, poke their noses and muss up their hair. His older siblings laugh with him, and he teases them about other campers who their cheeks go red around, and makes sure they get enough sleep.

But they’d love Michael more, if he was here. If they could hear the jokes that Lee used to make.

And this is a primary difference between the heroes of Camp Half-Blood and Will: they don’t always save the people that they love. In fact, very often, they lose them. But they at least get a chance.

Will’s brothers died and he never even knew they needed him.

::

Will has had bad days before.

When he’s not wanted to get out of bed but he does anyway because he has to. And he snaps and snipes until Kayla demands he take a break from working the infirmary.

He’s curled up with Nico and fallen asleep on thick duvet covers. Especially warm because Nico is almost perpetually cold except to Will, who often thinks he feels like he’s the warmest person in the world.

But he doesn’t often have bad days like this. And it’s obvious, because neither of them know how to deal. Nico wants to help, yet doesn’t know how – doesn’t know whether to reach out and touch or keep his distance, and Will can’t tell him either way because his head is swimming and he doesn’t know what he wants.

He just wants this sadness to stop – the third bad day this week. Or, bad night, because it’s in the midst of the night when his voice cracks and the words spill out, the things inside of his head trailing like weird slime and leaving stains. And Will hates this, the kind of vulnerability that shows.

He’s usually so okay – made of stone and built not to break. Each and every demigod has this sometimes, when something inside snaps and subsequently, everything crumbles. Will is particularly good at ignoring these waves. At least, usually, not now.

Mouth down-turned into a small frown, and Nico scratches at his head.

“But I don’t understand,” he’s saying. “You shouldn’t – you shouldn’t feel that way. You’re not – you’re worth more than that, Will.”

Will makes a small sound.

“You’re worth everything, and you don’t need to go on – on stupid, dangerous quests to do that. Not going on a quest doesn’t mean you’re not a hero.”

“Pretty sure it does, di Angelo,” Will says, with a little bit of humour in his voice, but it sounds kind of empty. Like fish in the underworld.

Nico shakes his head. “Look, no, listen to me. It sounds – gods, it sounds so lame – but like. If anyone is gonna be a hero here, it’s you. You patch up the Stolls like, every day. And put up with the Hermes cabin and work overtime after Capture the Flag. I don’t even want to know how many times you’ve healed Leo and Jason and Percy after duelling. Especially Leo – him and his stupid fire tricks – but like. See what I mean. Or where I’m going, at least?”

“Yeah,” Will does. He gives Nico a slight smile. “It’s sweet.”

“No, it’s not. It’s true.”

“I don’t know…”

“Well I do,” Nico huffs a little impatiently this time. “You don’t know your own worth. Well, I do, and so does Kayla, and so does Austin. And it’s a lot, so this sadness you’re subjecting yourself to – it’s bullshit. I get it. Really, I do, but…”

“Nico,” Will says gently. “I appreciate what you’re saying. But I don’t think you can make this go away.”

Nico looks at him.

Nods, slowly.

“Okay,” he says. “I guess I can’t. But I can stick out with you, right?”

“What do you mean?” Will asks, and despite himself he’s got a little smile forming on his lips at the determined look in Nico’s eyes. Light, fiery – like very much living things.

“I’m just gonna stay here – as long as you’re cool with that – until this shit gets out of your head. And if you want me to say stuff and like, tell you over and over that you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met, I will. So… yeah.”

“We’re in your cabin,” Will reminds him.

Nico blushes. “And you’re lucky I like you. No one else is allowed to spend so much time in here.”

Will lets out a little laugh, a bit wet, like there are tears caught in the back of his throat.

“I’m lucky you like me,” Will says. “I’m lucky I have you.”

He lets himself fall against Nico, lets his head fall against his lap as Nico’s hands reach out, his fingers running through the crown of blonde curls. And it feels good, nice, soft. Safe. Nico bends down a little, presses a cautious kiss on his temple.

This is unfamiliar territory. But they’re learning.

And the black stuff around Will’s heart is starting to thin out like ice on a warm morning, on a sunny day, though it might take a while longer to thaw entirely.

They fall asleep near like that, half snoozing and falling onto each other, wrapped up in one another and exchanging sleepy kisses, and Nico whispers, when he’s not so sure Will is still listening, is still even awake, “you’re really, really, really worth it.”

::

In the morning they wake before the sun has fully risen, dregs of pale light streaming into the cabin.

Nico’s already holding Will’s hand.

“You were as cheesy as me last night,” Will tells Nico, and there’s a little smile on his face when his cheeks pinken.

“Yeah, well,” Nico mutters. “You bring out the worst in me.”

“I kinda like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And Nico?”

Nico looks at him, raises his eyebrows expectantly. “Mm?”

“Thank you.”

::

Will still doesn’t know what his problem is, or why he gets so sad sometimes, or why the shadows seem to whisper around him that he’s not good enough, and he’ll never be a hero, and he’s not worth it.

But the good thing about having a boyfriend with weird, cool, underworldy powers?

He’s very good at chasing those shadows away.


End file.
